Transcript
Introduction
It must have been sometime in 1979 that I first heard the words, but James, if there were a better kind of vacuum cleaner, Hoover would have invented it? "That was just before I left the first company that I had set up. I gave up security, income and respectability and persuaded an old friend to come in with me on a project that I was developing in the garage behind my house.
For 12 years, I labored under heavier and heavier debt. I tried and failed to interest the major manufacturing companies in my product. I fought terrible legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic to protect my vacuum cleaner. And in 1992, 13 years later in the cold, wet English countryside, I went into production on my own as sole owner of the machine I had conceived, designed, built, and tested alone.
After thousands of prototypes and modifications and millions of tests, I was in terrible debt but in love with the Cyclone. By 2002, one in four British households owned a Dyson. My company was selling 1 million vacuum cleaners a year and turning over 300 million annually. And my products had achieved total worldwide sales of more than $10 billion. Finally, late last year, I fitted the last and most important piece of the jigsaw. I entered the biggest, most innovative, most exciting market in the world. I came to America. This is the story of how I did it."